Can you really take a good picture with a smartphone?

Looking back over the first year of our regular photography feature, I am so pleased that we have been able to provide a vehicle to display some of your very accomplished photography, not to mention bring together a superb collection of entries for the first of our annual Photography of the Year competitions.

As you will know, if you regularly follow my commentary on photography, I am not the greatest supporter of photography by smartphones and, although the world is flooded with digital imaging, a vast quantity of which is from phones, I worry that history may observe this period as a downward turn in the quality but not the quantity of imaging.

There is no doubt a good photograph has been made easier to achieve thanks to electronics, clever programming and refinements in manufacturing. One of my first cameras was a Kodak Instamatic. Fixed focus and exposure, no control other than winding the film on, even the processing was taken out of your hands, and results were grim compared to today’s standards. To a certain extent things haven’t moved on. The standard photo app on an iPhone has little control – flash on or off and HDR on or off.

I photographed a simple assignment at Wimpole Hall last weekend: children making paper kites. The location of the table and sunlight made for very heavy backlighting. It required considerable flash and exposure adjustments to balance the light. The mother of the child I was photographing tried to photograph the same scene with her iPhone and no matter how she tried, the image was almost a silhouette. I felt disappointed for her and her child that the memory of that event will be less than perfect and more concerned when the mother said to her child, ‘that’s a nice picture’ – you couldn’t see the child’s face! I interjected and held up a piece of white paper illuminating the child’s face then suggested she also took a photograph from the opposite side with the child looking over its shoulder so the scene would be fully illuminated showing her how to turn HDR on so that the highlights and shadows would be less extreme.

The moral of the story is always take a selection of photographs with varying lighting conditions by walking around the subject you are photographing, understand the limitations of the device you are using and work to the strengths. If budget allows, buy and carry a camera as well as your phone for more options. Even if you are not an enthusiastic photographer take time out to look around websites and photography magazines for simple hints and tips to help you get better pictures. Basic understanding of light takes little time to learn but can transform a ‘snap’ into a photograph.

If you have anything you would like discussed in the blog over the coming weeks and months email me keith.heppell@cambridge-news.co.uk or tweet me @PixCambridgeCN.